The Importance of Music to Girls (2008)

The soundtrack to Lavinia Greenlaw's life, meticulously dissected in The Importance of Music to Girls, reads like a playlist from the greatest fantasy radio station of all time — unrestricted by genre or rigid format, yet with mainstream appeal. On one page, you might be humming a David Bowie number while contemplating growing up outside London in the 1970s; a few chapters later, you see Bob Dylan, the Sex Pistols, and the Velvet Underground ignite the author's teenage passion and endless introspection. Though Greenlaw's prose can be dense and difficult to read, Dylan would be proud. B